Fake reviews on Tripadvisor
 

This morning on MSNBC, they interviewed a person who revealed that he has had a business in which hotels or restaurants hire him to write fake positive reviews on Tripadvisor as well as fake negative reviews of competitors. I wonder how much of this goes on.

Probably a lot. Thankfully, I can usually spot them by them being almost too positive or too negative. I usually go by the ones in the middle or if there are a lot of reviews calling out the same issues. Of course, you have to take them all with a grain of salt.

I guess more than I like to think about...The "upsetting' issues bout this interview--"fake" pictures on the hotels web sites. Well, maybe not fake but 'doctored" As view of rooms interior
were not accurate. Ex: one side of room had windows looking into trees...actually that side of room was a blank wall.::room had 'view of ocean"--3/4 picture show cement wall with tiny side of water.
I have used Trip Advisor for years and never felt the places I stayed were misrepresented..but then again ????

We booked a hotel in Seattle last year, which had many, many positive reviews on tripadvisor. No one mentioned that the hotel was in a crummy area and looked out on a gentleman's club that emptied out in the wee hours of the morning with lots of drunken shouting. Since that debacle, I am very wary of their reviews.

It would be disheartening to learn that's the norm and not the exception. I use TA before booking any new-to-me hotel/B&B and I am a frequent contributor. I have never been paid, but I have written all types of reviews -- glowing, middle of the road and fairly negative.

I guess it's true for TA as any forum -- take all opinions with a grain of salt!

I am leery of TripAdvisor reviews by people who have posted only one review--and there often many of them.

I recently stayed at a B&B in Mendocino that some claimed was "a little bit of heaven" with a "wonderful breakfast." The reviews must have been written by people who usually stay at Motel 6 and start the day with Pop-Tarts.

htty - you made me spit on my monitor. I use the forums more than the review section.

My regrets.

I've received better advice on TripAdvisor for selecting hotels in Europe than in the USA, and I believe TripAdvisor has helped me avoid booking rooms that are noisy or inconveniently located.

HTTY

I've been a regular contributor on Trip Advisor for years as well as Fodors. You definatly have to read between the lines and do more research than just reading those reviews. I never give credit to reviews in which it's the reviewers first post, it's the reviewers first time out of the country, it's the reviewers honeymoon, the review is too positive or too negative. You have to spend a great of time on there to figure out what's correct and what's not. I write good and bad things in all my reviews. As a matter of fact my last review for Playa del Carmen was pretty bad after 3 trips there and I received a couple of snotty remarks for it. Including feedback from the hotel we stayed at. It's just an opinion. Take it or leave it. I agree I use the forums more than the reviews. More info and you can ask questions and get good feedback. Fortunatly, TA is not the only web-site out there in order to research good info for travel.

I also am a regular contributor at Trip Advisor in 5 different destination forums. I rarely read the hotel reviews section. As far as being "wary of their reviews"... there is no *their* at TA just a collection of posters same as here.

When you use the forums, you can ask people in more detail about something negative they've said.

I am always wary of any review that is ALL positive or ALL negative. I mean, let's be real here. Have any of us stayed anywhere that had no faults?

<b>How to spot FAKE hotel reviews:</b>
--DON'T READ any reviews by posters who have only 1 contribution.
--Click on the reviewer's name and review their on-line history. Do they sound like a real traveler?
--<b>Real reviewers</b> tend to use the word <b>"I"</b> a lot, and include unique details. <b>Fake reviewers</b> tend to use the word <b>"you"</b> a lot...for example a fake review may say "You should stay here...they will take good care of you...you will have a great experience if you stay here". That's a fake review!
--The <b>most reliable hotel reviews</b> are written by posters with a large number of contributions. These posters usually have contributed detailed trip reports as well.
--A real traveller usually posts questions before a trip, then posts a trip report, and hotel reviews...then may answer questions about his/her trip. Look for reviews by these travellers.

Fodors and tripadvisor are both most helpful if you visit them regularly for years...until you "know" the experienced travellers...you can literally "follow" them around the world! (-: For example, I can vouch for anything posted by "shillmac" or "melnq8"...because I have followed their advice for years and had great trips! :-D

Another flag for a lot of spin is when a small place has way way too many reviews compared to it's size. This is a sure sign that the owner is pumping up postive reviews to push the lodging up to the #1 slot, since TA uses the number of reviews as part of their ranking formula. I particularly discount the ranking and read the reviews from the bottom up, discounting the one\ofs.

I know at least one Destination expert who owns a hotel, and tries to steer people on the forum to his locale and suggests that they review the rankings (which they have of course inflated). He used to directly recommend it, now he is just more subtle.

Trip Advisor is aware of this problem and tries (not always successfully) to keep the fake reviews away. I used to be a DE back in the dark ages when we were called local experts, and there were some REALLY obvious scams then. A Key West B&B was named the top B&B in the world by TA, when it wasn't even considered above average (if that) by Key West locals.

I don't normally read reviews unless someone mentions them in a forum, and as others have said, if it's a first-time poster, I'm very reluctant to believe it. At least in forums, other people can usually spot a fake and aren't shy about questioning it.

mlgb - I'm stunned there's a DE who owns a hotel! What a colossal mistake!!!

TA is quite aware of this. Not only do they tolerate it, they allow him and his friends to flag and have removed postings that mention this issue.

Has anyone ever read that letters to editor are written by pros as well?

I read the hotel reviews and contribute hotel reviews on TA. So far so good. I take them in their totality. Really really pisses me off that there would be fake reviews, but isn't all adverting pretty much a fake review? It's just there you know what you're looking at. All things done with the intention to deceive are annoying, but we're surrounded by that everyday.

Yeah, those reviews are troublesome. The #1 activity in my town (according to TA) would never be the first thing a real traveler would want to do in my beautiful city.

For the reasons above and more, I do not post on TA. Besides false reviews, there are some who have no idea of which they speak when it comes to reataurants.

As some have noted, you need to read between the lines and have a good BS detector. So why bother?

So true. Some people have no idea from whence they speak period. I have been to Prague but I won't be on the Prague forum giving bad advice. And I only recommend restaurants that I've been to more than once. Anything glowing and drippy sounds fake as do vague haters.

I saw a restaurant owner on TV a few days ago in silhouette who admitted he was writing glowing reviews about his own restaurant on TA and also writing reviews about his competition using words like dirty, filthily, bad food, etc.

I post on Tripadvisor haphazardly. Haven't posted a review in a long time. Been led really astray only once - the hotel was terrible, the staff was terrible, the location was terrible, our room was terrible, etc. Not one good thing could be said, but somehow it had been the Number One recommendation on Tripadvisor (granted this was just a mid-sized city with not too many hotels on Tripadvisor)! so I promptly wrote a very realistic review and the hotel plummeted from its number one position.

These websites are just tools for my travel planning. There are other websites with other reviews. I don't read the reviews of just one website. Lately, google maps will have a small icon to a restaurant/hotel on its maps. I'll click on that icon and often a diverse grouping of reviews will appear, for example, from Tripadvisor, bookingdotcom, qype, etc. If the property is really interesting, then I'll do further research and read more reviews from other websites, try to find as many pictures as possible, and google the street view. Then I'll read about the area of town where the hotel is located - in other words, research, research, research.

<<I can usually spot them by them being almost too positive or too negative>>

If that is the case, then several of my reviews would be suspect. I was more than enthusiastic in my reviews of a couple of hotels we loved, so guess that would be suspect to some. I guess it's a toss-up, since there is no "fake" detector to use. If I'm shopping for info I use both reviews and the forum. The combination of both usually works out well for us.

Wouldn't you think that SOMEBODY would have mentioned that a hotel "emptied out in the wee hours of the morning" and that it "overlooked a gentleman's club?" And no amount of so=-called "positive" reviews would be able to counteract that for a lot of people. And yet, the earlier poster says (or implies) that this never surfaced until THEY got to the hotel.

I am certain it is true and because of those possible misses what I often do is go in and read all the "terrible" reviews first (and believe me, some of the reasons people think a place is "terrible" can be somewhat, if not outrageously unreasonable) and I also look at the percentage of "terribles" compared to the totsl number of reviews.

And then there's Yelp, which has been sued for allegedly telling companies that they can get negative user reviews deleted from Yelp if they would just advertise on Yelp ...

Like Dukey I always read the bad reviews first. Both on travel sites and Amazon as well.

Yes. I agree. I have lived in Gettysburg PA and time and time again the COLTON hotel comes up top on the list. I do not understand it . Room doors go right out to parking lot and its old and in need of an update. I am sure there are people writing "fake reviews" all over the counrty

When I returned home from Seattle, I rechecked the reviews, thinking I must have missed the ones mentioning the gentleman's club. There were some poor reviews, as there are for most hotels, but no mention of its view and the resultant noise.

Hmmm ... I have reviewed hotels occasionally on TA, but I until this thread I don't think I even realized there were forums or message boards. I guess I've just always used it (readiing & contributing) like Yelp. Who knew?

The forums at Trip Advisor are a wonderful resource. They are divided up by destination. Some forums are much more active than others. For a couple of my favorite places, if I asked a question here on Fodor's maybe I'd get a 2-3 replies. When I ask on the TA forum for that destination I get dozens of great answers.

The quality of forums varies greatly on TA. Some are dominated by a few, while others have a wider participation which keeps them "honest", more or less.

Digbydog, what's the hotel in Seattle? Is it in Belltown?

I am wondering the same thing.
I was thinking maybe The Ace.

HTTY

The Buenos Aires forums seem to have more than their share of phony reviews.
Every couple of days it seems, we have some knucklehead coming along, raving about the new hotel he stayed in , blah blah blah.
Clues: They joined TA that morning.
They never asked on question about the trip before taking it ..
They say odd things and generally never return to answer questions from other posters. Especially the suspicious ones who ask for more info about the trip.

Business owners, employees and relatives do it all the time.
Most of the time, if you send it in as inappropriate, TA gets rid of them.

I like the TA forums for a couple of reasons. The posting is about the travel / place and they keep attacks on posters, chit chat etc down to a nice minimum.
The editors are pretty much on top of things..
You can get a nice mix of posts from locals and visitors and even though I live in this place, I learn about things in this city every day from those forums!

TripAdvisor has no patience for nasty posters so there is generally a nice atmosphere in all the forums.

This said .. I never ever use the Review sections. They are at least 75% dishonest reviews.
Or you get the oddball who drives past hotels and photographs them or goes into the lobby and will write a review. So take those for what they are worth ..

We have a DE who owns a wine store and he is very good about not promoting his business.

"Digbydog, what's the hotel in Seattle? Is it in Belltown?"

I hope it's not the hotel we recently booked for September. :)

On the contrary, I read all the horrible reviews on TA for the RIU Tropical Bay in Negril, Jamaica and couldn't believe it was that bad and went ahead and booked there. It was a huge regret. The reviews were correct and I should have heeded the warnings.

Same with Breezes in Curacao. Horrid reviews not only on TA but other sites, so we didn't book there and was glad. We loved the Lions Dive. The Curacao forum on TA had some very bias contributers that gave some pretty inaccuarte information. Many, not all, on TA have hidden agendas which makes it quite difficult to get good, correct information.

For our upcoming trip to Seattle and an Alaskan cruise I have read everything on Trip Advisor, Fodors, Cruise Critic and others. You just never know and hope with blind faith that everything will work out. I appreciate all the information from the long standing contributors that have been posting for years like myself. I also include my e-mail address and my picture website in all my reviews and many posts if people want to follow-up or ask questions.

I WISH people wouldn't accuse "75%" or throw out any other number as a kind of educated guess as to the number of alleged fake reviews on TA. It's insulting to those who write genuine reviews. I will continue to contribute as I think it is a good resource. Plus, it's fun; I'd take photos of my hotel room anyway -- so I may as well have another reason to share them!

We found some great places to stay for our last trip to Italy, thanks to TA. I think the fake reviews, positive or negative, are pretty easy to screen. I disregard anything from a one- time poster, and read the others selectively. Sometimes I even contact the person who posted the review via PM. If the person responds, that is good. If not, that is also useful information.

Scarlett your experience may be pleasant on the BAs forums but I can assure you that it is not universal and varies between forums.

I use tripadvisor and sometimes also contribute as truthfully as I can, I read reports carefully knowing some might be fake reports , one of the problems they have is that TA mixs up al kinds of hotels. I mean five stars are mixed with one stars.... it is a little confusing and does not help to choose the right hotel.

We have a very average Italian place down the street with a dozen 5 star reviews ranked #1 for our town...its pretty clear in that case
But the clever ones can really manipulate their ratings without raising eyebrows.